Signs (2012) is a permanent artwork created for a school in South London.

A special signpost with five moving arms is installed in the lobby of Corelli College. Each arm can point to anything on the earth or the solar system, showing the location and its distance from the school.

One head for example, may point at Venus – it’s arm’s display showing the vast distance between the school and the planet. But as you watch, you notice the arm is moving to track the planet as it travels across the sky. The distance is updated too as Venus moves.

Signs will also point to many things on the earth. Cities, places of interest, the homes of pupils, the origins of their families.

The artwork can also point to things that move across the sky (like flights), across a sports field (like the position of a tennis ball) and across the political spectrum too, as world events unfold. It will point to social unrest, to sporting events, and to environmental change.

Its five heads can also point to imaginary things, to things that will happen in the future, and alternative endings to stories. To mathematical solutions, to peoples ancestry and to scientific breakthroughs.

And it will point to many many other kinds of things too.

Commissioned for a school in South London, we believe the children will have a great deal of fun and learning dreaming up ways to use the artwork. It has also been shown in Brookfield Place, Perth Australia for the Perth International Arts Festival.